The Pocket
by T-1000000
Summary: The creature who calls himself The Pocket makes his way into the open human world, intent on saving those who suffer from misery through death. And yet, a human boy living in Chicago gives him the strangest idea he has ever heard...
1. The Longest Road

_#1:The Longest Road_

He looked up at the sky, his pale eyes scanning the pitch black sky as the rain poured onto the area surrounding Chicago, Illinois. Nodding to himself, he continued walking through the storm towards the enlightened Windy City.

His true name was Breynz Hrandor-pronounced b-ROO-nd h-ROON-der-which meant "Pocket" in Gershakian, though since the creatures of this world called "humans" did not speak or understand Gershakian, that is what he simply called himself when speaking to them:The Pocket.

He was a Dekllanian, a species who had, through convergent evolution, evolved to become a type of combined humanoid and canine creature. This did little to help, though, on their planet, a world filled to the brim with savage and merciless predators, a planet where only the strongest, fastest, and most intelligent creatures could ever hope to survive and-if they were lucky-fulfill that hope.

And so, the Dekllanian's first gained the trait of being able to see in their dark, lightless world, despite the fact that their eyes were pale and they were originally blind. Their eyesight was able to make out a single bead of sweat on a person's forehead, able to focus on a single strand of hair on another Dekllanian's head. Their hearing had become supersonic, able to pick up sounds from ten miles away, though this meant little if one was slow, and so to match their hearing, they were able to run at approximately one thousand and nine hundred and seventy miles per hour.

After that, they had gained the trait that made their appearance so unique, and so horrifying to the humans:their skin, muscle, and bone fused together into a thick outer carapace, with the only remaining body parts of pure muscle being various inner organs such as the heart and brain as well as the tongue. Superhuman strength gave them the ability to lift something as heavy as a General Sherman tree and to punch something with ten thousand pounds of force. Black fur grew in thick patches all over their bodies and many Dekllanians took the custom of letting their hair grow down to their waist, so as to protect them from the brutal, unrelenting winters of their world.

They felt little pain from any injury and had gained a regenerative healing factor, a trait commanded by the brain, which immediately ordered the body to produce new cells and tissue to heal a wound incredibly quickly. Their most vicious and unique adaptation, though, was the slit in the center of their chest that was opened by the Dekllanian upon being faced by a threat; upon opening, the slit unleashed a tangled mess of wet tendrils which then tore the threats head off and absorbed it into the body. The brain then read the genetic code of the threats face and grew the face out over the Dekllanian's face, in an effort to fool predators. The face dissolved either at the command of the Dekllanian or if a new head was absorbed.

The Dekllanian's one remaining weakness was light due to their world's incredible darkness. The mere light of a lamp was able to scorch a Dekllanians face and singe their hair.

Breynz, by all accounts, barely stood out amongst his fellow Dekllanians. His head looked like a wolf skull atop a bulky body with bone replacing flesh and muscle, while his shaggy black hair fell down to the middle of his back. The eyes in his sockets were pale and a grin which flashed his fangs and stretched to his graudls (the two hollow holes on the sides of his head used for hearing). He was dressed in an almost completely black outfit composed of a long sleeved shirt, pants, and knee-high boots with the only non-black part of his outfit being the thick brown rope that was his belt. It was a garb that had been adopted from the Genoshean tribe, who had lived in the Kezian Crescent of the Dohjen Republic.

The seemingly eternal grin on his face betrayed what he had been forced to go through in his life so far, half of it in his childhood. Though his mother worked around the house, he had never gotten to know her or even her name, as she was little more than a punching bag for his father whenever she did something he did not like, or when he was drunk (and most of the time, it was both).

His father had been the leader of a small-time crime syndicate, which he ruled with an iron fist and yet, he was never happy; he always wanted more. More territory, more resources, more men, more _control_ of anything he wanted. He had often beaten Breynz due to his need to find a target to focus his anger on. When he had once bothered to ask his father what he thought Breynz should be when he grew up, he had told him that he thought he should be dead for being annoying.

When he was nine years old, his mother had accidentally knocked down a lamp meant to give off a small amount of light in order to provide heat, starting a fire. Angry at her for causing the damage, his father had pushed his mother into the fire so her head was submerged in the flames, holding onto the ends of her hair so she could not escape. The immense light from the flames had killed her within a minute; afterwards, his father had brought him along to see his mother's corpse being dumped into a landfill, telling Breynz to never let anyone see the real him, the actual person at the core.

"People can't understand the real person at heart. The truth is, people _like _masks, so keep yours on. Do not compromise" was what his father had said.

After coming home from school at the age of twelve, Breynz's father had pulled a black hood down over his head as soon as he had come through the door before he had sent him tumbling down a flight of stairs. His father removed the hood, revealing that he had taken Breynz to the basement, before he had left, saying just four words.

"Keep your mouth shut."

He had never heard his father speak like that before; his voice was so low, yet he had hissed like a dzerne, pure rage hiding behind a thin curtain. The mask had fallen off.

Breynz had laid there for what seemed like hours, until the door to the basement was thrown open and then promptly shut and locked. His father had raced down the stairs, a handgun clutched in his shaking right had. Fear and desperation plagued his face, and in his pale eyes, Breynz thought that he had seen, however faint it might have been, a hint of regret. Above, he could hear multiple footsteps and various intermingling shouts.

His father had screamed and spat about how the law enforcement had finally caught up with his syndicate, and now, they were going to Breynz away and coddle him and make him into a "toothless bitch", as he had said.

"I will not allow them to mutate me like they shall do to you!" his father had declared, and it was then that Breynz had realized that that hint of regret concerned the fact that there would be no one to pick up the pieces of his organization.

That being said, his father had placed the gun in his mouth, clamping his jaws down onto the muzzle before pulling the trigger. The back of his head had exploded, pieces of his brain and the back of his head exploding outwards in a red mist, a flash of orange light igniting the inside of his head and burning it into an unrecognizable black clump.

Breynz had been shifted from orphanage to orphanage until he was nineteen, when war had broken out between the Olitarian Confederacy-a democratic alliance between Craet, the United Teregon, and the Free People's Republic of Reinmerk-and the alliance between the oligarchical Felizarn and the plutocratic government of the People's State of Jeduine (Breynz had never heard of a more ironic name for a country).

The war had been fought over argon drilling rights, though Breynz had not known that at first and had enlisted in the Craet Land Force because he thought that when he came back, he would be a hero. People would admire and respect him, he would be able to easily build a family, and he would not have to worry about money ever again; his benefits from his service would take care of that.

The Olitarian Confederacy had won, but not like Breynz had imagined them to; a total of fourteen million soldiers had been killed, and hardly any of his comrades had known why they were fighting. He was the only survivor of his unit, Helion Company, 203rd Basic Infantry Regiment, 96th Land Force Division, the rest of them having been wiped out during the campaigns at Hergi-gon, Perskan, and Tarzus.

He had come home to a nation filled to the brim with ungrateful, whiny, and spiteful civilians who hated the soldiers because they saw them as psychotic "baby killers". In response, a large number of soldiers had violently retaliated and in the United Teregon, a riot had broken out and had left almost thirty civilians dead.

When he had turned twenty four, he had met Elnar Kotran at a pharmacy in a convenience store. They had married within a year, though he had refused to ever tell her that he was a veteran, fearing that she would reject him and whine and moan about how soldiers were murderers, just like every weak minded civilian did.

The marriage itself fell far short of what Breynz had expected. Elnar's parents had cut off all communication between themselves and him when they had found out that his father had been a criminal. His first child, his daughter Golma, fell ill with pneumonia just several hours after she was born, forcing her to be isolated until she was fifty six days old. When Golma was three, his son Drenik was born; he was blind in his right eye.

He still remembered that day. The memory was always so vivid, like a technological recording. It seemed so close. Elnar was wiping the tiled kitchen floor clean, Golma was learning the alphabet from some pathetic book her teacher had given her, and Drenik, who by then was two years old, was doing something with a puzzle; he certainly wasn't solving it, that was for sure.

Breynz remembered yelling at Drenik for messing with the puzzle. Elnar got mad at him, telling him that their son was just a child, and Drenik started crying. Golma yelled at her parents for distracting her...when the front door was kicked open. The Dekllanian was white with his hair only covering his scalp, just like the haircuts given in the military. He waved around a beam cutter rifle, screaming and ranting to the point of almost sounding unintelligible; what Breynz had been able to make out were incredibly vulgar and angry comments directed towards Elnar due to her criticism of the veterans.

Breynz had run up to the man and pinned him down, telling him that he was going to call the authorities on him if he stopped. The man did not stop, kicking Breynz off of him and wrapping a black blanket around his head, screaming something about how veterans did not kill veterans; a code of honor. Then, just as Breynz started untying the blanket, three shots tore through the air. When Breynz had taken the blanket off, the veteran had already left and his wife, daughter, and son were dead.

The police had conducted a search for the psychotic veteran for two weeks before simply dropping it. The life insurance he had bought for his family had turned out to be useless, saddling him with over forty eight thousand and six hundred Craetian dollars to pay for the funerals, and eventually, his bank had foreclosed his home due to the murders that had happened there.

It was at that point, when his bank had taken the last reminder of the happy life he could have had, that Breynz had realized something. The reality around him was that the whole world was filled with suffering inflicted upon innocent, undeserving people. When people died, they went to a happier plane of existence, one that was only reserved for the dead and the gods who ruled over those souls. And for that, Breynz hated them.

The world around Breynz, though, was so rotten to the core that it was unable to learn anything from its suffering. He had demanded that a priest of Nadul, the god of emotion in the religion known as Adjutarianism, conduct a ceremony to endow him with the power of empathy, so he could feel the misery and sorrow of those around him. To his surprise, he had received the power, and to him, it was the gods' one sign of kindness. With the power of a book called the "Desgratica Ednors"-which, in Jeduinian, meant "image of death's law"-he had been able to see into the many other universes, parallel to his own and separated from each other by "void" universes.

He had chosen to enter one universe at random, and after passing through a pitch black vortex for what had seemed like an eternity, he was ejected into a room, a room constructed of a completely alien architecture. He had almost immediately sensed the bitterness from somebody in the opposite room. That was when his mission had truly started.

Breynz intended to kill those suffering from their misery, as absorbing their heads would allow him to grow their face onto his own, and with the false smile etched onto his face, everyone would be able to see that there was a better place to go to after death. Besides, in his world, if someone just couldn't take it anymore, it was best to kill them. Killing them would free them from their stress, so why wouldn't the creatures of this world think the same? Of course, Breynz still had yet to learn much about the creatures of this world:humans.

Upon first seeing them, Breynz wondered just how such animals could possibly survive. Their clothing was loose and thin, and there was barely any hair on their bodies. Their eyes were much too colorful, their faces were too round and flat, their noses were too heavy and long, and instead of having graudls, they had ridiculously large and leathery pieces of cartilage called "ears." To Breynz, they were the most foolish and disgusting beings he had ever seen, what with their ignorance of their harsh environment and their dusty, flimsy, aging skin.

He had not been sure of how to approach the creature, even though it was alone. It had been carrying a large clawed object in its hands, with the clawed portion attached to the wooden handle. Breynz had left the room he had entered, and slowly walked towards the back of the room, hugging the wall. Originally, he had intended to simply sneak up on the human, before opening the slit in his chest and tearing its head off and absorbing it. If he hadn't knocked over the glass bottle of liquid on the table.

The human had heard the bottle being knocked over and had swiftly turned around, its eyes bulging and its lower jaw nearly falling off, before it had pulled a brown curved stick out of its left pocket and started screaming. It hadn't screamed anything in particular, just maniacal gibberish. Breynz had almost immediately ran up to the human, and in half a millisecond, he was directly in front of him. The stick in the humans hand, however, seemed to have been a gun just like the ones in Breynz's universe, and just like those guns, a flash of yellow light had filled his vision. He had collapsed to his knees, screaming and crying like a freshly born infant, while his face was scorched and smoking, the front of the top of his hair on fire. From several hallways away, he had heard another gunshot. After about half an hour of clutching his face, he had gotten up and ran-slower than usual, as he had still been reeling from the burns-and had found the back of the humans head torn apart, blood coating the wall behind the corpse, the gun still being held in the humans left hand, albeit very numbly. Right next to the humans corpse was a desk, and on top of that desk was an almost half rectangular, half circular brown object of medium size, and dangling from it was a wired crescent device. Eventually, Breynz would learn that such things were called "telephones."

Eventually, after hours of walking around and observing the structure, Breynz had heard loud footsteps and shouts of, "POLICE!" and "We ask that you come out and show yourself!" Even though he did not know of anything pertaining to the English language yet, Breynz knew exactly what the human had done with that device called a "phone":it had summoned other humans to come and find him. Breynz would have none of that, and he had hidden himself inside a pitch black tunnel deep within the silo, and under heavy amounts of garbage that led directly to a sewage pipeline. He had had no intention to reveal himself to anyone, especially when he considered the fact that the humans raiding the silo would have guns as bright as the first humans.

Once the footsteps and voices had ceased, he had wandered around the silo until he had found the first humans showering system, which looked remarkably similar to the Dekllanian showering systems; he had no desire to reek of garbage for an extended period of time.

Ever since then, for more than thirty seven years-he knew because he had seen the first humans calendar-Breynz had hidden himself within the silo. Occasionally, some teenagers would come to the silo, hoping to prove themselves by trying "survive" him. In reality, Breynz could feel it all within them-all of the bottled up rage at their parents and society for "putting them down", their anger at their peers for talking behind their backs, and in some cases, a strong desire to murder those around them. But Breynz alleviated that pain; he opened the slit in his chest, and took their heads, and their souls, to a better place. He made them happy in death. It was the only place where happiness was eternal.

And now, after four teenagers had come to the silo, two of them had been killed by him while the two others had escaped, allowing him to escape as well.

He was here now, in Chicago, the city colored with blood. Human blood.

Amongst all of the miserable souls that overwhelmed him like a tidal wave, Breynz could sense one who stood out from the rest, his misery and restrained rage practically oozing from every orifice of his being.

After thirty seven years, he was finally in the open world of the humans. Tonight, salvation would come from bloody tendrils, and the last thing the downtrodden would see was the smile of a man with nothing to lose.

IIIIIIIIIIIIIIII

With his face scarred and pitted from untreated acne and his ribs easily visible underneath his one hundred and thirty five pound body, Aaron Challis was one of _the_ most physically repulsive seventeen year olds not just in Chicago, but in the whole world. His hair was as black as ink, covered in grease, and grew all the way down to his eyebrows, with all of the accumulated sweat, heat, and grease creating a nest of blood red pimples on his forehead.

Aaron was popular in elementary school, having at least twenty friends in each elementary grade and having all of his childish jokes laughed at because, to everyone's young mind, they were funny, and not because they were considered "white."

And then middle school came. The random mixture of students from elementary schools, the vanishing of longtime friends, and the introduction of periods and multiple teachers in one day killed any chance at popularity that Aaron might have had. It wasn't that he didn't want to or didn't try to make new friends to replace the old ones that had moved; it was because Chicago was still about forty years behind in race relations. Anyone who claimed otherwise was either lying or just stupid.

The black kids in his school hated him; they viewed him as being a racist, despite the fact that Aarons family had not even come to America when slavery had been around. The girls stayed away from him because his arms were not thick with rippling muscles and he didn't vomit his lunch to flirt with them, even though it was the muscled vomiters who hit the girls and, in several cases, raped them.

Puberty had hit, and when it did, his face had turned as red as a ripe apple. Aaron had often clawed at his acne, resulting in blood oozing out and his fingernails to be filled with grime. His sideburns had grown down to the sides of his chin, forming a goatee rooted in the acne. The hair in his armpits had grown into thick clumps that ran down to his forearm. Ever since puberty, everything about Aaron was so _disgustingly _inhuman.

High school was even worse. The football players were savages, sadists who thought it was their right to push other students around because they were the ones who brought their school recognition. The principal didn't punish them and had their grades "protected", so they still got decent grades despite never actually learning anything. North Chicago Community High School never actually won any of their games, but the school still kissed the football teams ass, apparently holding out hope for a win.

Tonight, he found it hard to fall asleep, even though it was past twelve o'clock and his parents, Ethan and Margaret Challis, were both asleep. Were it not for the rain tapping on his bedroom window like an impatient intruder, it would have been completely silent. He hated storms-the constant pitter-patter of the rain, the whole room shaking from of the thunder, the sound of cars rushing through the water a times when those driving should have been sleeping at home. But anything beat total silence, when Aaron could hear his own breathing before an inexplicable footstep-like noise came from the hallway outside.

Aaron sat up in his bed, looking down at the blanket blankly, before he laid back down. He shot back up two seconds later when he heard one incredibly close thunderclap, followed by another of similar proximity. He briefly plugged his fingers into his ears, though he could still hear the rain.

That was when Aaron realized it.

That was no thunderclap.

That was his front door getting thrown open and slammed shut.

He leaped out of his bed and peaked his head out of his bedroom door. Aaron could hear the footsteps coming up the stairs at an alarming pace, each step sounding like a hammer banging down against a nail, telling him that it was a very large man. That threw out Aarons original plan-waiting until the intruder entered his parents' bedroom to jump him-out the window.

The intruder came into the hallway and continued, the footsteps coming closer and closer to Aarons room. Aaron closed the door as quickly and silently as he could before he ran to his closet, hoping to get inside and hide before the intruder came.

He had nowhere to hide now, though, as the door was thrown open with such strength that it fell off its hinges. Standing before him was the intruder, the most hideous creature he had ever seen. To Aaron, it was a demon straight from hell; its clothing was completely black, save for the brown rope that was its belt. It stood at around six feet and four inches. That was where any similarities to humans ended; its head was a wolfs skull, grinning yet displaying no emotion, only its fangs. Its hair was black and as thick as a fur pelt, short at the the front and the sides yet long at the back. Its eyes were both completely white, yet gazed right into his soul. And it spoke, in a deep, growling, raspy voice:

"_I...am The Pocket. And I have come for_ _**you**_."

Aaron responded with the only way he knew how to in such a situation. He screamed at the very top of his lungs, jumping back into his bed and pulling the blanket over himself. He continued screaming, hoping that his parents would hear him. The creature, which seemed to call itself "The Pocket", tore his blankets off of him and tossed them to the ground. It was still grinning.

"_I have come here to grant you your salvation. Please, fear not, for soon, you shall be free_" The Pocket growled. A disgusting splitting noise reached Aarons ears, and as he looked down at The Pockets chest, he could see bloody red tendrils squirming inside. Suddenly, those tendrils slithered out of The Pockets chest like a legion of snakes, coming closer and closer towards Aarons head.

"_Many have told you that there is no escape, but there is. __**I **__am that e_-"

A resounding _BANG _and a flash of yellow light cut The Pockets sentence short. Although Aaron could now only hear a distant ringing in his ears, the flash of the Remington Model 870 pump action shotgun did not hinder his sight as much. He could see The Pocket falling to its knees, opening its mouth in a scream, before it clutched its face, which looked blacker than it did before. He turned his head to see his mother turn the lights on as she stood next to his father, the barrel of the Remington smoking in his hands.

"_**NNNNOOOOOOOOOOO!**_" The Pocket suddenly shrieked, a noise so loud and painful it was able to break Aarons deafness. Right behind it was a small pool of a black liquid.

"_**TURN OFF THE LIGHTS!**_" The Pocket screamed, and now Aaron could see smoke emitting from its blackened face, right before the scent of burning hair reached his nose. The Pocket ran towards Aarons parents so quickly that he was a black and white blur. It threw his father and mother into the wall outside before it flicked the switch down. Its grin gone and replaced with pain, The Pockets head slowly turned towards Aaron, and its eyes narrowed.

_How the fuck can its eyes narrow? Its head is a __**skull! Pure bone!**_, Aaron thought before The Pocket ran back to the side of his bed and pulled him out. It held him in the air by his left shoulder, squeezing tightly while forcing Aaron to face his doorway as his parents were getting back up.

_"Never have I come across such an uncooperative human as yourself! Do you not want happiness?_" The Pocket hissed into his ear. Now both of Aarons were back up on their feet, with his father pointing the Remington at The Pockets leg.

"Dad! Don't shoot, don't! You're gonna make him kill me!" Aaron screamed as that splitting noise came again.

"Put my son down _**NOW! **_I don't know what you want from us, but you'll get nothing from murdering my son! Think about it: you kill my son, you'll either be dead or put in a zoo! Just put my son down, and we can both go back to our families" Aarons father yelled at The Pocket.

"_Your son must die! Either I bring him salvation, or you will shoot your own son!_" The Pocket roared with venom in its voice, tightening its grip on Aarons shoulder.

"Is this bullshit what you call _SALVATION?!_" Aarons father spat, loading another shell into his Remington. The Pocket roared at that, the tendrils squirming out of the slit in its chest and encircling Aarons head.

"Dad, mom, quit just fucking standing around and do something!" Aaron screamed before the tendrils wrapped around his head tightly. He tried to scream, but the tendrils were so tight, his mouth was pressed shut. The tendrils were warm and thickly coated in some kind of fatty substance which felt like vegetable oil running down Aarons face.

The, just as suddenly as the tendrils had wrapped around his head, they let go, and Aaron fell to the floor. Almost instinctively, he began wiping his head and face, feeling as if though his head was covered in a mound of sweat.

He blinked and saw that the light was back on. The screaming reached his ears, and Aaron turned his head to see The Pocket covering his face with his arms while smoke filtered out through the gaps.

"Good night, you piece of dog shit" Aarons father laughed as he calmly walked up to The Pocket and aimed the barrel of the rifle at its head.

It had tried to kill him; it had tried to rip his head off, had broken into his house, and had nearly forced his father to shoot him. But, deep down, Aaron saw anger behind that grin, a rage at the powers to be for shoving his wants and needs to the side, for taking away his one chance at happiness. Deep down, Aaron saw the same specimen as him. The _ultimate _specimen.

Before his father could pull the trigger, Aaron ran to the light switch and flicked it back off.

"Honey, what the hell are you do-!" his mother shriek at him before The Pocket threw his father into the closet door and ran towards Aaron and his mother at impossible speeds. It took one look at his mother, snorted, and then kicked her in the leg, sending her flying down the hallway. It then turned back to Aaron and grabbed his throat before raising him to face it.

"_Why?! Why do you not want to be rescued? Do you not want happiness and __**peace**__?_" The Pocket roared at him in its deep, animalistic voice, shaking Aaron with all of its might.

"No-why, why? What have I done-to be killed?" Aaron asked, struggling to speak through the shaking; he felt as if though his brain was going to fall off its stem and smash into his skull at any moment.

"_From you, reeks a rage and discontent unlike any I have felt. But why do you struggle? Do you not want your bliss in the next world?_" The Pocket answered while it stopped shaking Aaron. As it answered, its expression changed to a look of sadness, as if though it was depressed at the fact that Aaron did not want to be killed.

"Because you can't just kill people because they feel miserable! Its not right!" Aaron yelled at it.

"_But...you humans do __**not **__kill the miserable? The grieving? Those so angry, they are on the verge of violence?_"

"I don't know if you noticed, but we are _**NOT **_the same species! Why can't you understand that we don't have the same customs as you? By killing the miserable, you're only spreading more misery! Families grieving, friends left without anyone to talk to-then you're gonna come after them! What are you gonna do when you wipe out an entire race? Are you going to kill yourself because you'll otherwise have to live with that?"

"_But-you just let them live!_"

"So what? They did nothing wrong! There are millions of criminals and sub-humans out there that murder and steal, and yet, you only go after those who are having a bad day!" Aaron spat, his saliva flying into The Pockets face, though it did nothing to wipe it away. Instead, its face twisted into a vicious snarl.

"_So you are telling me to betray my traditions for your beliefs? To go kill those who cause the misery?_"

"Obviously! You think your life is worth something when you murder innocent people?" Aaron sneered at it, narrowing his eyes in contempt for the creatures philosophy, right before it threw him into the wall right behind him.

Aaron could hear the wall crack like wood in a fireplace; his whole body throbbed, feeling as if though he had been stabbed in a thousand places with a blade of molten steel. His breathing was weak and strained, and he could feel blood swelling up in his throat. He was shocked he was still alive; he was sure that The Pocket would throw him with enough strength to instantly kill him.

Aarons eyes briefly flicked open, and he saw The Pocket standing over him, the distrubing grin back on its face.

"_Fine._"

That was all it said before it sped away so quickly that Aaron could only briefly see a black blur, and with that, Aaron allowed unconsciousness to smother him.

IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII

How could one attempt at salvation have gone so horribly? He was just another teenaged boy, so why had he failed? Even if the human had screamed so loudly that he sounded like the opposite gender, why did it take him so long to just _attempt_ to rip his head off?

Breynz had not known that there were two other humans in the house, the boys mother and father. Still, they had been smarter than any humans he had ever come into contact with. They had turned the very environment against him, had used large guns to burn him with their flashes. Even though he had eventually overpowered the two elders, there was still the boy himself.

Aaron Challis-that was his name. The boy had been cunning, screaming so as to call his mother and father, turning the lights off to bait him, and then actually trying to _negotiate _with him. No human had ever tried to negotiate with him until now.

Breynz could not believe his ears when the boy had suggested to him that he needed to stop killing the miserable-those who were already dead inside-and instead focus on those who caused the misery itself.

_Just because one kills the first patient, does not mean the disease comes to a halt_, he thought as he threw the boy into the wall. The child was still an arrogant human, after all.

He quickly checked on Aarons mother and father, and found that they were still out cold.

_Good; they shall not try to follow me for attempting to save their son_, Breynz thought. He resumed his grin; Aaron was still conscious, and the boy needed to think Breynz had agreed with him. He could sense it within the child-_nobody _agreed with him. Besides, Breynz had been both a victim and practitioner of psychological warfare; these humans would most likely be left unnerved by his large, emotionless grin.

He saw the boys eyes flicker open, weakly; it was clear that he would soon fall into the same slumber as his mother and father. Walking over to him, he looked down and decided his course of action.

"_Fine._"

And with that, he sped off, racing down the stairs and only stopping to open the front door, close it once he was outside, and then he continued, his empathetic abilities searching for nay who caused misery of any kind.

With just one word, Breynz had sealed his fate.

_**-Two hours later-**_

Nothing; absolutely _nothing. _He had been searching for more than one hour, and yet Breynz had still found no man or woman that had caused an excessive amount of misery for others. In this city, this human city, how could he sense no decay? Surely, there was but one human who had created an admirable amount of grievances?

He felt betrayed, lied to. Did that Aaron boy trick him just so he could save his own life? He still could not believe that humans did not save the miserable. How could an entire species be so cruel as to allow their own people to continue suffering? Did they tell the miserable to simply get over it?

_How could they expect such a method to work? What can work on one who is only living in the body?_, Breynz angrily thought. Never had he imagined that an entire species could be so _sadistic_.

"_Where's __**my **__reward?! I stack the plates when they're washed all the time!_"

"_You're not old enough to have an allowance, Marcus._"

"_That's bullshit, and you know it!_"

He had caught something. A wave of anger, resentment, and above all else, a desire to make things his way, with no room for compromise.

"_I brought this middle school a state championship last year! What do you mean my grades can't be raised? Not even a little?!_"

"_Marcus, you seem to keep forgetting that it was the team that brought this school a state championship last year. Besides, you know the school policy-if your grades fall below a 70, you are ineligible for any extracurricular activities, including football. But does any of this really justify you making such a scene in the hallways?_"

_The boy stood up and tried to throw a punch, but his arm was grabbed by the student resource officer, who promptly picked him up and carried him out. Even when he was launching an array of swear words, the boy could still hear the counselor speaking in a perfectly calm voice:_

"_You're not going to talk to me like that._"

Breynz raced towards the man as fast as he could, the man's rage continuing to overwhelm him.

"_So you're telling me I can't join because I don't know how to use a gun?! What kind of gay excuse is that?! Give me Carl, I'm gonna show that bitch-ass motherfucker how easy it'll be to rip open his tiny dick with my bare hands!_"

"_You got an attitude too, shorty! Ain't no one gonna talk about my nigga Carl like that, so you lucky I ain't gonna cut your tongue out with my scissors, you motherfuckin' faggot!_"

"_Nigga, I ain't short! I'm taller than you!_"

"_Figure of speech, dumbass bitch! I can tell you never graduated middle school!_"

_The man tried his best to rush forward, but was stopped by the two larger guards next to the recruiter. They quickly threw him outside and locked the door, and from outside, the man could hear the recruiter laughing._

"_Your ass is too pussy for me to kill!_"

He was here; Breynz found himself at the doorstep of one of the humans' bizarre houses. It appeared to be two stories tall, with light peeking out from the two square windows next to the front door. From outside, he could hear the shrill, painful fighting.

"I said _I love you_, Marcus!" he heard the thick voice of a woman screaming; she sounded as if though she was just barely holding back the tears.

"You talkin' to yourself when you sayin' that?!" the rough voice of a man replied before Breynz heard a particularly brutal slap.

"I've loved you before! Why can't you see that?! Why do I have to tell you now?!" the woman shrieked, her voice growing thicker with emotion with every word she yelled.

"Because you're tryin' to save your own cheatin' ass! You think I'm that fuckin' stupid, huh, you little bitch?! You think that because I just wanted you to cook my food, that I don't know nothin'?!" the man roared, punctuating every pause with another slap, before Breynz heard the brief sound of metal jingling.

"Marcus, why you gotta think like that?! Why you gotta take off your belt?! I never saw anyone else! Why can't you believe me when I say anything?! When I say _**I LOVE YOU, MARCUS!**_" the woman cried, her sobbing now quite audible, only for it to be rudely interrupted the sound of leather lashing against skin. The woman's screams grew louder with each lashing, to the point that Breynz thought his graudls would start spewing blood.

"'Cause you don't love anyone but yourself, dumbass slut! You can fool your own retarded self, but you ain't never gonna trick me! I know dozens of women who aren't so goddamn stupid that they believe their own stupid lies!"

"_**I'M PREGNANT WITH YOUR CHILD, YOU STUPID PIECE OF SHIT!**_"

For several seconds, everything was completely silent. Breynz thought that one could hear dust fall in the sheer silence. To him, it was the loudest thing he had ever heard, louder than any bomb could ever hope to be.

And then, the man reacted.

"Well then let me keep you busy 'til you're dead! I ain't gonna let some kid with your nasty-ass blood see _anything _outside of your womb!"

Breynz decided that that was enough; this was ten times worse than anything his father had ever done to his mother; even his murder of her was better than constant rape.

But the light. There was too much light in the house. If he went inside, he would surely burn up within minutes.

_Surely, there is a connection that bring power to the house so I may enter without dying?_, Breynz thought as he sped through the wooden gate into the couple's backyard. He heard more metal briefly jingling.

"_NO! GET OFF OF ME, MARCUS! YOU CAN'T DO THIS! YOU HAVE NO RIGHT-!_"

"Shut up! You wanna know what Uranos did so Gaia's kids never came out? You wanna know? He showed her his love, he just didn't want any little bitches gettin' in their way! And how does Gaia accept his love? She gives a scythe to Kronos so the little bastard can castrate him! See, I told you I ain't as stupid as you!"

The woman started screaming again, this time so uncontrollably that Breynz knew what was happening. There was no time to find a power source and shut it off.

_Stupid child!_, Breynz angrily thought as he raced back to the front door of the house and, taking a deep breath, sped forwards and into the house, shattering the door into multiple pieces in the process.

He could immediately feel the light clawing at him, making his head burn and blacken within seconds. He could smell the smoke rising from his face and hair, and the sound of crackling hair reached his graudls.

However, at least the couple had stopped. Instead, the man stood up, his pants pulled down and his belt in his right hand, staring at him with incredibly wide eyes and his mouth agape. The woman was on the ground, though she had lifted her head and her reaction to him was the same as the mans. Unlike most of the humans he had met so far, these humans were very dark skinned, with the woman simply wearing a sleeveless white shirt and the man wearing a black and orange shirt with a large half-circle in the center of it.

"_This light...it burns!_" Breynz growled before he turned and found another light switch similar to Aarons, and he pushed it down. The light instantly died.

"M-m-m-m-m-m-m…" the man started stuttering, his face covered in nothing but fear. The belt fell out of his hand, his whole body shaking violently as his eyes squinted in fear.

Breynz ran up to him in less than half an attosecond, the slit in his chest opening.

"_I am The Pocket. I come for __**you.**_"

With that, the tendrils sprung out of his chest and wrapped around the mans head before they whipped back, tearing the mans head clean off in the process. The tendrils then slowly slithered back into Breynz's chest as the mans body fell to its knees, fell forward, twitched for two seconds, and then laid still.

The slit closed and the man's face grew out onto Breynz's face, grinning grotesquely. Knowing that there was no point in keeping the mask, Breynz made the face disintegrate.

"Buh-buh-by…"

He looked down to see the woman, her eyes as wide as a mans fist and her speech so slurred that she couldn't even spit out a single coherent word.

Before being forced out onto the battlefields, Breynz had been educated on giving medical aid before the actual military medics arrived, and so he had learned about the state of shock, and how it could affect both soldiers and civilians. Specifically, this woman was suffering from both the physical shock caused by the man's violent behavior, and mental shock caused by both his ghastly-at least, to humans-appearance and his violent murder of the man.

It was why he hated working with civilians; well, one of the reasons. To Breynz, they were so weak in both body and mind, unable to cope with anything quickly and learn to adjust to their condition in an acceptable manner and time span. Their brains faltered and entered a catatonic state the moment they saw something they were not expecting, and they had no idea how to fight, forcing the soldiers to constantly leap in and save them, often costing the lives of the good soldiers when the civilians should have been ready to give up their lives.

He knew that the first thing he needed to do was loosen any tight clothing that had the potential to cut off the woman's blood circulation; fortunately enough, the man had already done that for him when he had tried to rape the woman. Instead, he sat down next to the woman and grabbed her by her jawline and forced her to look at him. He needed to reassure her that she was now safe and everything was going to be fine; of course, he knew how unpredictable the mind of a civilian was.

"_M'am, you need to calm down! You are currently in a state of shock, and if you cooperate with me, everything will be fine!_" Breynz told her as calmly as he could. The woman's only response was her eyes growing larger and her skin actually beginning to turn pale, despite how dark it was.

Breynz stood up and cursed the woman for being so uncooperative, and decided on a different approach. Seeing a bowl on a counter in the dining area, he ran to it and placed it underneath the cleanser before he moved the handle to the right, releasing a jet of cold water into the bowl.

Running back to the woman, he sat back down next to her and tipped the bowl over, dumping the water onto her face. Immediately, the woman gasped and sat up, as if though she had come back from the dead. She looked around quickly, until she set her sights on the large, wolf skull-head creature by her side.

"No, no..._no! _Don't touch me! Stay away, _RIGHT NOW!_" she screamed, crawling back and away from Breynz. He stood up and stared at the woman, still grinning at her as he tilted his head slightly to the side.

"_M'am, you are safe now. I have killed the savage that tried to torture you eternally, and as such, you are no longer in danger_" he told her in the same deep growl. The woman took some kind of small rectangular device out of her pocket and cowered behind a couch, whimpering as if though it was going to save her.

Realizing that he was done here, Breynz turned and began quickly walking out of the house, intending to search for a little while longer before heading back to the boys house.

"You...whatever you are! Who are you? Why did you come here, tonight?" the woman asked quietly. Breynz stopped and turned his head to face the woman.

"_I am The Pocket._"

With that, he turned his head to face the shattered doorway and sped outside, realizing he was wasting his time in the house.

IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII

"_A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step._"

-_Lao-tzu, Tao Te Ching, chapter 64_

(_**NEXT ISSUE: **_The Pocket continues his quest to find those who cause misery in Chicago, as Aaron begins to bond with the inhuman creature, seeing something of himself in the Dekllanian. But Aaron's parents remain unsure of the creature, and The Pocket might have already bitten off more than he can chew when the Chicago Police Department begins investigating his attacks and a young boy experiences his first crime up-close...All this in _The Pocket #2:Life on the Street_.)


	2. Life on the Street

_#2:Life on the Street_

He could somewhat hear the pained croak escape his throat, the pain still clawing at his skull and brain. Aaron Challis still couldn't see anything, a vibrating darkness obscuring his vision. Aaron clawed at his bed, and felt his blanket on top of him; his parents must have placed him back in bed and placed the blanket back on top of him after they had regained consciousness after The Pocket had knocked them out, along with Aaron.

He still couldn't quite believe anything that had happened several hours ago, a few minutes after twelve o'clock. Some black-clothed, mulleted monster with a wolfs skull for a head had broken into his house and had knocked Aarons bedroom door off its hinges before it had attempted to rip his head off with tendrils from within its chest, growling about salvation, or something along those lines.

Even though Aaron believed he had convinced the beast to focus its attention on the criminals and low-lives that infested Chicago like a swarm of locusts, the last thing he had seen before he had blacked out was The Pocket standing over him, saying "_fine_" before it had run off at an impossible speed. For all he knew, The Pocket might have just run off and decided to leave him alone. If it had decided to listen to him, then why? What made him special?

Aaron pushed himself up, straining his breathing as he clutched at his bed. His vision was coming back, and from what he could see, his door was still on the floor, torn off its hinges; the part of the hallway wall that The Pocket had thrown him into was still heavily pitted and cracked.

Aaron gritted his teeth as he thought about how much the damage would cost his parents, not to mention how they would try to explain it; who the hell was going to believe that a wolf skulled-head, blank eyed monster had tried to rip your sons head off?

He turned his head to the left and saw that the black blood from when his father had shot The Pocket was gone, as was the thick liquid that had covered his head when The Pocket had briefly wrapped its tendrils around his head.

_Mom_, Aaron thought.

Almost as if though on cue, he heard two voices coming from downstairs, though they were barely audible. Aaron knew that it was his parents, thinking he was still unconscious and trying not to wake him up.

They obviously wanted to know why The Pocket had suddenly left and why their son was lying on the hallway floor. Deciding to briefly turn on his phone, he saw the time:6:53.

_Maybe...it'll be on the news_.

His parents always watched the Today show, every morning. If The Pocket had listened to him and had decided to go Rambo on the criminals in Chicago, somebody was sure to have noticed it, and there was no way a nationwide news show was going to pass on the opportunity to report on murders committed by a skeletal werewolf.

"Wait! Listen, Ethan-you hear something?" Aaron heard his mother, Margaret, whisper to her husband and his father, Ethan Challis. Aaron knew that his mother wasn't an expert at whispering, though, so anyone could listen to her "secrets"; it was one of the reasons she had regular fits of uncontrollable anger that weren't really directed at anyone in particular, because somebody had heard her trying to say something behind someone's back.

"I think it's him! Aaron! He's woken up, and coming down the stairs!" his father said with a loud sigh of relief. Ethan Challis was best known by his family and community for being incredibly reclusive, not wanting to talk to anyone due to a dislike of people in general, a lack of social skills spurned by his status as the black sheep in his family for telling incredibly rude and violent jokes to relatives. From what his father had told him, he had realized that the jokes would only inspire further hatred rather than replace it with laughter, so he stopped talking unless it was absolutely necessary.

"Aaron!" his mother cried as he reached the last step, grabbing him by his shoulders and twisting him around.

"Mom, what-!"

"You see that bruise on the back of his head, Ethan? What the hell are you thinking getting out of bed, you idiot?!" his mother screamed at him. Aaron gritted his teeth and squinted as the screaming racked his eardrums.

"Aaron, I suggest you walk back up those stairs and lay down on your bed! That animal threw you into the wall, you aren't gonna be thinking straight at least until Monday!" his father barked at him.

"Thanks, mom and dad! I'm pretty goddamn happy I survived, too!" Aaron spat at their faces as he spun around to face his parents. He had just woken up from nearly being slaughtered by something that should not exist except for in those stupid horror stories passed down on the Internet, and yet to his parents, it was business as usual:find a way to make him look like the villain and then guilt-trip him when he refuted their horrible logic.

"This isn't about you surviving, son! You have a serious head injury and you're probably not gonna be thinking too good after what happened last night; the least you could do now is think logically about getting some rest for God's sake!" his father told him.

"No! I have homework to do over the weekend and that thing, The Pocket, is still out there! If it's still hunting and killing innocent people, we know its weakness! We can stop this thing from causing more incidents like this!"

"Come on, Aaron, are you seriously thinking you have the power to fight that monster? Can you stop acting like a moron and listen to your father just this once?" his mother sighed as she slapped her face, trying her best to hide the annoyance on her face.

"Now, usually, when you think of a superhero, you think of Superman or Batman, men who fight to protect the weak but make sure not to stoop to their enemies' levels. But what if superheroes killed? Would they still be heroes? And what if I told you these individuals were real? Well, in the city of Chicago, Illinois, one dark and brutal vigilante seems to have sprung off the bleakest comic pages and started a spree of terror upon criminals" they heard Matt Lauer say as the Today show began. Pushing his parents aside, Aaron rushed into the living room, seeing an ominous scene on the TV:a house surrounded by crime scene tape, police cars, and heavily armed policemen.

"Within this home, it seemed to be just like any other night-neighbors would hear the yelling, the screaming, the crying. They wouldn't do anything, though, as the husband, Marcus Bell, was a brute of a man, standing at six foot eight and weighing three hundred and forty six pounds. Nobody was sure if he had any criminal connections, and nobody liked to think of what he might do to them if they snitched. last night, though, everything changed in an instant" Gabe Gutierrez said as the camera switched from the house to a crying black woman, her face plagued with unbelievable terror.

"I-it was...big!" she gasped, obviously horrified at the mere fact that she had to go back to the past night.

"More than six feet, just barely shorter than my husband. It had these black clothes, long sl-sleeves, gloves, pants with a brown rope! The rope...it was its belt! And its head was so _horrible_! It had these white eyes that just stared us through, and a really big smile on its face! Its-its teeth were so sharp, and its hair...it was black, long in the back but short in the front and on the sides!" the woman whimpered, barely holding back tears.

"I was looking up, 'cause I was knocked to the ground. Its face started blackening, and it groaned like a dog while it looked at our light. I don't think it liked the light. But, it ran up to my husband, and, so fast! It was so fast! A blur, like a blur! He just stood there, his mouth was so open, and then that things chest opened! It looked l-like its guts were coming out before they wrapped around my husbands head and tore it off, right off! The guts, they went back into the things body before it grew my husbands face! But, it looked like it didn't like my husbands face, 'cause the face...it turned to dust! You gotta understand, so many things were going through my head, when that thing crouched down and picked me up and said something like, "Woman, you will be fine, you don't have to worry about anything else" in this deep and growling voice like an animal! It turned around and before it could leave, I asked for its name. It just said, "The Pocket.""

Aaron slowly turned around to see his parents behind him, their faces twisted into almost comical expressions of boiling anger. Aaron himself could barely comprehend it; that thing had actually listened to him! It was being called…

...a _superhero_?

"_What did you do?_" his father growled, sounding almost like The Pocket itself, animalistic and guttural.

"Well, you see...that thing was gonna kill me, so I asked it why it was like this. It told me that, amongst its kind, they killed the miserable, so I made a suggestion, to...kill criminals in...Chicago" Aaron summarised to them, slowly backing away as both of his parents' expressions turned into pure murder.

"So you told the thing to become a..._**superhero?**_" his mother asked, practically spitting the word "superhero" out as if though it was a piece of rotten meat.

"No, I said nothing along those li-!" Aaron was trying to say when a heavy knock came upon the front door. Thankful that the distraction pushed back his parents' chance to potentially murder him, Aaron sprinted to the door and unlocked both of the knobs and threw the door open.

What stood before him was a six foot four person dressed head to toe in black, save for a brown rope that acted as a belt; covering its head and shoulders was a black trash bag, which the person almost immediately flung off, revealing its long black hair, completely white eyes, and a wolf skull head.

The Pocket.

The hulking beast casually pushed Aaron aside as it stomped in and slammed the door shut. Almost as if though acting on instinct, his father whipped a .45 Magnum out of his pocket while his mother ran into the dining room and pulled a four inch long butcher knife out of the knife rack.

"Hey!" Aaron snapped at The Pocket, who stopped and turned its head toward him, its grin still etched into its face. The creatures eyes suddenly slid back into the sockets somewhat, its fangs bared.

"_What do you want, child? I have already obeyed one of your commands-do you think that I am your pet, human?_" it growled, though with annoyance more readily apparent in its tone rather than anger.

"What makes you think you can just walk into my house like this? You sure as hell weren't invited the first time, and none of us gave you a call to come over now!" Aaron pointed out to the creature, not fazed anymore by its borderline demonic appearance. To its credit, The Pocket also did not back down, leaning forward as if though it was about to tackle the young human that was currently loud mouthing it.

"_Where else am I supposed to stay? It only makes sense for me to rest in the home of the one who suggested that I not kill him; if you have already forgotten, that was you_" it snarled.

"But this is _my _house! You can't just make this your damn Batcave!"

The Pockets grin faded and was replaced by a look of pure confusion; from what Aaron was able to tell, its expression was the best approximation of raising an eyebrow that it could do without any eyebrows.

"_I...do not understand. What is a Bat-?_"

"It doesn't matter what you understand!" Aarons father growled, catching the attention of The Pocket, who seemed to realize the man was there for the first time. "I'll give you two choices:you can either leave and quit terrorizing my family, or I can blow your brains out, and this time, I won't stop until you're really dead!"

The Pocket bared its fangs once more growled like a bear, causing Aarons fathers hands to tremble, though he still kept the gun trained on the creature before him. Aaron stepped back, knowing that not even a burst of light-which it seemed to be vulnerable to-would stop The Pocket, and he remembered how badly it had beaten both of his parents; judging by its body language and the incredibly deep growl, another encounter would end up with The Pocket standing over a mangled corpse.

"_Your light...I hate the light!_" The Pocket spat, carefully eyeing the muzzle of the gun while it balled its hands into fists.

"Oh, I remember just how much the light hurts you! Hell, I'll keep firing until your head bursts into flames, if that's what it takes to make you piss off! Now beat it, jackass! You have ten seconds:ten, nine, eight, se-!"

The Pocket suddenly rushed forwards, a blur of black and white running faster than Aaron could blink. Aarons father was sent flying into the small iron gates that kept the fireplace closed, and at the same time, The Pocket snatched the gun out of his hands and threw it to the floor; it burst into five pieces upon impact.

Next, it ran straight to Aaron's mother, who tried to stab The Pocket as best as she could. The creature simply grabbed the knife and threw it onto the dining table before shoving her back.

Aarons father managed to push himself up and pull out the serrated hunting knife out of his pocket, the jagged edge gleaming in the light of the window. As Aarons mother screamed and tried to fight back while The Pocket grabbed her shoulders, he attempted to lunge at it, but the beast somehow noticed him and spun around in a blur. It grabbed his right wrist and threw him back, where he landed on his head on the foot-rest before he bounced off.

"Hey! Get your disgusting hands off my m-!" Aaron yelled as he charged at The Pocket. His battle cry was cut painfully short when The Pocket lifted its foot and stomped on Aarons own right foot while still holding onto Aarons mother. He fell forward and curled his legs inward, screaming entire sentences of nothing but profanity.

"_You_" The Pocket growled, turning back to face Aarons mother.

"_What do you want from me?!_" she sobbed, tears running down her face as she was forced to look into the pale eyes of every monster from her worst nightmares combined; there was nothing to distract it and save her now.

"_Make me something to eat._"

"Wait..._what?_" she said. She suddenly snapped out of her misery and couldn't believe her ears; did this thing just ask for her to give it something to _eat?_

"_Give me food! Do you know how much a man starves when he has eaten little more than scraps from the waste for thirty seven years?_" it asked. The Pocket was still grinning, and even in its deep yet raspy voice, Aarons mother couldn't believe this creature, and she immediately pushed it off.

"You break into my house twice, threaten my son, attack my family, damage my property, and get yourself called a goddamn superhero despite acting like an asshole, and you're telling me to _**COOK FOR YOU ?!**_" she screamed.

"_Yes._"

"Who the hell do you think you are, you piece of ugly shit?! You've got a lot of damn nerve to bust into my house twice and think I'm gonna be your fuckin' maid! You know what you can do? You can take that ugly goddamn smile off your disgusting face, and shove it straight up your ass while you get the fuck out of here! Oh, and I hope the door hits you on the ass on your way o-!"

Too quickly for her to comprehend, The Pocket sntached the knife off the table and pressed it against her throat with a level of speed that would have led to most people clumsily pushing the knife through the skin.

"_That was not a request; you __**will **__give me something to eat __**now.**_ _Your whining and disobedience has become rather annoying, like a child with a puzzle that is not even close to being-_" The Pocket growled, only to stop itself. It gave off a soft noise that sounded similar to whimpering, though the grin remained, and it lowered the knife and let go of Aaron's mother.

Aaron's father was getting back up, still clutching at the top of his head and cursing under his breath. Aaron himself, meanwhile, was pushing himself off the floor and still clutching at his right foot. Looking at her husband and son, and realizing one of them was still alive and the other not injured seriously, she looked back at the creature that had held a knife to her throat just a few second ago.

"What do you want?" she asked softly.

"_What do you have?_"

While they were waiting for all of the food to either be heated or put into the microwave, Aaron looked at The Pocket, who was staring at the microwave, his eyes glued to the screen of light and the slowly turning food, even as it remained in the dining room and stood a good five feet away from the kitchen.

"Are you a man or woman?" he asked it.

"Aaron! What are you doing?" his father snapped as The Pocket turned its head to look at Aaron, then his father, then back to Aaron.

"Well, if you're going to be breaking into my house and stealing my food, I should have a right to know!" Aaron sneered.

"_I am male; does my voice and clothing not make that clear enough to you?_" The Pocket said.

"Well, you're obviously not human, so excuse me for being curious!" Aaron told him. The Pocket then looked at Aaron's mother for a second before turning back to Aaron.

"_Your human females have large breasts as well. The fact that I do not have protruding breasts also indicates that I am male._"

"Wait, so your women also have...boobs?" Aaron asked him; his father was the one to respond with a slap to the back of his head.

"Just what are you?" Aaron's mother asked The Pocket, repulsion still evident in her tone. It was one thing to be feeding an intruder and attempted murderer; it was something else entirely to be feeding something that wasn't even remotely human.

"_I am a Dekllanian. I do not come from this world, or even this realm_" he told all of them.

"But, but...how the hell is that possible?! You're saying you come from a completely different universe entirely!" Aaron's father cried out. The Pocket pulled out a chair and took a seat, the chair creaking beneath him.

"_Perhaps it is best if I told you everything...so far. To pass the time while we wait._"

And so he told them his true name-Breynz Hrandor-and of his family, his time in the War for Argon, as it had come to be known, his new family, his loss of them and everything he had worked for, the ritual that had given him the power of empathy, and his arrival in the human realm.

When he finished, Aaron and his parents looked at him with squinting eyes and mouths open for intense questioning.

"So you just randomly decided to jump to some other dimension when you could have stayed in your own?" Aaron's mother asked. The Pocket growled at her in agitation, contrasting with the ever-present grin on his face.

"_Were you not paying attention? My realm, my people-they are both too rotten deep within their cores to realize the extent of their suffering and learn from it_" The Pocket explained.

"So why just randomly attack humans coming to the silo? What did those people ever do to piss you off?" Aaron asked him.

"_Were none of you listening? I came here to help the miserable, to save them from wasting away in a life that cared for them not. I could feel the misery, the self-loathing, the bitterness that they felt; they came to the silo, trying to prove themselves to their peers in the face of their misery._"

"So you just murdered innocent people? Innocent children?" Aaron's father asked in shock. From the way his face was twisted, he made it obvious that he was ready to kick this serial killer out, even though he knew he would be overpowered yet again.

"_I did not murder them; I freed them from a life of emotional torment. I showed them that there is something better than life, beyond life. My people kill the miserable, but they do not learn from the causes of these miseries. They simply do it to fulfill their tradition._"

"So their screaming and begging for mercy did nothing to stop you from ripping their heads off?!" Aaron's father screamed at The Pocket, who simply sat there, looking up at him.

"_They told me to leave them alone, that I was a monster, that they they did not wish to die. They were lying only to themselves_" The Pocket said.

"But, they were...they were people! They were somebody's child! How could you think about killing other people's' children when your own children were-!" Aaron's mother was screaming until The Pocket opened its mouth as wide as a snake would and roared at her, spraying pasty white saliva in her direction and making her and Aaron jump out of their seats.

"Listen Nietzsche, I don't care about your feelings, you will _not _threaten my wife and s-!" Aaron's father was barking at The Pocket.

"_You shall not speak ill of my family, innocents too young to die at the hands of a gibbering madman_" he growled at the three humans before him. The microwave rang, and he stood up and looked at the white box that said "READY" in large green digital letters.

"_It is ready_" he told Aaron's mother, who was still looking up at the grinning beast with horror.

In a minute, sitting before The Pocket were ten hot dogs, six cups of shrimp noodle soup, four cheeseburgers, and twenty pieces of popcorn chicken; to the side was a liter of Ozarka water. The Pocket scanned over the food-though nobody could be sure if his grin was just there or if he was actually happy about the food-and turned to the bottle.

"_How do I open this?_" he asked Aaron.

"You just grab the middle of the bottle, and twist the cap until it comes off! Do you not have bottled water back home?" Aaron asked him, annoyed.

"_The bottles used by the Dekllanians had a seal on top that simply had to be ripped off; nothing as complicated as this_" The Pocket explained.

"A seal? What the hell…" Aaron's father muttered under his breath.

"_I can hear you well_" The Pocket told him without turning to face him.

"Your hearing...right" Aaron's father sneered as The Pocket began eating.

He picked up the plate full of popcorn chicken and tipped it over, slowly dumping the food into his large mouth. While he was chewing on that, he started chugging from one of the soup cups and finished it in three seconds before moving on to the next one, and then the next one, until he was done with the chicken and soup in forty eight seconds. He picked up a cheeseburger and bit off half of it with the first bite, and then finished with three more bites. In one minute, all of the cheeseburgers were gone, and in two and a half more minutes, the hot dogs were completely devoured. The Pocket picked up the water bottle and let the water simply fall into his mouth and rush down his throat, his head tilted back and his jaws opened wide.

Slamming the bottle back down onto the table, The Pocket stood up from his chair and faced Aaron and his parents, all of them staring at him with wide eyes and drooping jaws.

"_Where can I go clean my body now? It has been long since I have bathed_" he asked them.

"Umm...er...the shower is upstairs, in my bathroom" Aaron's mother plainly told him. "Aaron, go show him where the shower is."

"_May I also take these clothes off for washing?_" The Pocket asked, clutching onto his rope belt.

"Uh...yeah. When you're done, the dirty clothes go into the white basket in the laundry room; it's behind the door directly to the right of the refrigerator" Aaron's father said, his eyes still wide.

The Pocket nodded and undid his belt before untying his boots. Aaron and his parents started screaming at him the moment he started untying his boots.

"What the fuck do you think you're doing?!"

"Were your parents not smart enough to teach you some goddamn decency, or did they just not give a shit?!"

"Are you kidding me?! None of us want to see your balls!"

"_Is there a problem?_" The Pocket asked as he took off his boots and slid his pants off.

"Yeah, stupid! You're supposed to take your clothes off right before you enter the shower, not in front of everyone!" Aaron yelled at him, even as he took off his gloves and started pulling his shirt off.

"_I did not think you humans would be that crude and sensitive; my people do not have any problems with undressing themselves before friends and family if they are to bathe_" The Pocket shrugged before he walked to the laundry room door and opened it, laying his boots at the foot of the white basket before he dumped his clothes into the basket.

"Where do you think you are?! You are amongst _human beings! _We are different from you!" Aaron yelled at him as he walked out of the laundry room. The Pocket turned to look at him, his yellow skull-like head contrasting greatly with the pitch black fur covering his whole entire body.

"_That might be so, but you are also very prone to whining_" he scoffed before he turned back around and walked past Aarons parting parents. "_Now, where exactly is this "shower", as you call it?_"

Gritting his teeth, Aaron hurried behind The Pocket, noticing how his mother struggled to keep her gaze away from his rear end.

_Not nice to stare, asshole_, Aaron thought while he made his way in front of The Pocket before they started walking up the stairs.

Their journey to the shower was silent until Aaron slammed the door into his parents' room shut and walked over to the bathroom door. He looked straight into The Pockets blank eyes and spat right into his face. If The Pocket was angered or felt threatened by such an action, he didn't show it, for he simply rubbed the saliva off with his arm and kept the grin on his face.

"Who do you think you are to mooch off of us?" Aaron spat while he slid open the door into the shower and placed a blue towel upon the rack on the other shower door on the right and in front of the slid-open door.

"_Moo-ching?_" The Pocket pronounced as he walked into the shower.

"Yeah, living off our stuff! Just what makes you think you can walk into my house and say, "I want food! Let me use your shower! Let me take my clothes off in front of your family"? This isn't even your dimension, and you're acting like we're your maids and butlers!"

"_Where else am I to reside? Not only are you the first human that has actively resisted my attempts to save you, but you have also suggested that I instead go after the criminals, for some reason._"

"Oh, and I bet you loved every second of it, didn't you?" Aaron mocked as The Pocket slid the shower door shut. "I bet you loved it when you tore his head off and ate it, right?"

"_Not really. When I save the miserable, it feels like I am truly accomplishing something; I am doing something good by releasing them from a pathetic existence. When I killed that man, though, it did not feel like like I was being helpful. I was killing a narcissist, a man who felt miserable only because he did not get exactly what he wanted_" The Pocket sighed.

"Are you serious? You would rather kill people who did nothing wrong than those assholes and psychopaths who enjoy murdering others because it thrills them?" Aaron asked in shock as The Pocket turned the shower head on and water rushed out. He was even more surprised by The Pockets ability to turn on the shower without any explanation.

"How did you know how to turn the shower on?"

"_Showering systems used by Dekllanians are similar_" he answered plainly. For the next two minutes, the only noise was the rushing of warm water from the shower head. During those two minutes, Aaron saw The Pockets furry arm reach out and grab a bottle of body wash; three seconds later, he put it back.

_Another similarity?_, Aaron guessed in his mind. He looked at his reflection on the shower door; for a moment, he thought he saw The Pocket behind him, but he shook it off, realizing his mind was toying with him. He had never believed in aliens, but not only was one now in his shower, it looked like something out of his nightmares.

"_It is the duty of those who are still alive to learn from what causes misery_" The Pocket suddenly said, pulling Aaron out of his thoughts.

"What?" he asked.

"_When I chose to come to a different universe, it was with the desire to have the natives of wherever I arrived realize my mission, and learn from their mistakes. I would make sure that they did everything that was possible to end the sources of these miseries, and that included rehabilitating the criminal element_" The Pocket elaborated.

"But that's the problem! People don't learn! They _can't!_ They get sent to jail for five years for shooting down some random person, they get released, and they go back to being what they were before-an animal!" Aaron ranted. "The government and cities set up laws prohibiting the use of weapons, but these people are _criminals! _They don't care about laws! They're the ones who kill and rape and set fire to other peoples' livelihoods!"

"_Then it is the fault of the system of justice for not doing better at rehabilitation_" The Pocket retorted.

"They don't need rehabilitation! They need punishment! They send them to prison to educate them to be better citizens, but they ignore the fact that prison conditions toughen a criminal, and when they're released, they turn into an even greater savage! Send a teenager to jail for robbery, he gets out two years later and kills someone!" he spat viciously. "Don't you understand? It's because of the criminals and the fact that they aren't being punished that innocent people are suffering! It's not their fault that they're unhappy-if you take away the criminal element, then people will finally be allowed to appreciate life, something a murderer or rapist doesn't appreciate!"

"_But-_"

"If you're gonna be called a superhero by the news, then you need to be a real superhero!"

The water suddenly started hitting the shower floor instead of The Pocket judging by the increase in the noise of its impact.

"_What is a… "superhero?" I heard your mother using that word, or...something similar to it…_" The Pocket remembered.

"What, you don't have comics in your dimension?" Aaron asked. The silence that greeted him made him guess the answer was "no."

"A superhero is somebody-or something-that helps people, like a policeman, or firefighter; but they're something...greater. A superhero doesn't work for some collective body, they work above the law. They have powers or equipment, knowledge, and resources that allow them to crush criminals and save the innocent and defenceless when the police aren't there. Not every superhero has powers like you, but those that do are able to make themselves into something greater...a legend...a paragon."

"_Powers? I do not have powers; these are simply the naturally acquired biological defenses of the Dekllanian species_" The Pocket said.

"But to us human beings, your traits are beyond anything imaginable. They used to just be the stuff of peoples imaginations, like superheroes themselves; something that people only dreamed of when they wanted to fight back. But now-now, it's real! With your empathy, you can find the criminals, and with your super speed, strength, and ability to absorb peoples heads, you can stop them for good! You can save Chicago!"

"_But is that not the responsibility of the local authorities?_" The Pocket asked as he turned off the shower.

"It should be, but it's not" Aaron grumbled. "They're either paid off by the gangs to stay away from the investigations, or they're so restricted by bureaucratic red tape all they can do is guess who did what and why. But as a superhero, you work above the law, outside the system. There's nothing that can hold you back! Nothing!"

"_So you are saying that I should become a vigilante? Why not work alongside the authorities?_"

"Yeah, if you wanna call it that, but I personally find the word "vigilante" to be too...extreme. And do you really think the police will try to listen to you? They're either gonna arrest you for being a vigilante, or if you decide to work for them in the first place, they'll have you taken to the government so they can study you to create a new weapon of mass destruction. Humans have a tendency to lose it somewhat when they see something beyond their understanding" Aaron explained to him as he slid open the shower door and grabbed his towel, before he closed the door again.

"So? Are you ready?" Aaron asked him.

"_I did not want this_" The Pocket growled. "_The fact that you humans cannot learn from your mistakes, like the Dekllanians...it is disgraceful! There is no justice in it!_"

"Yeah, well welcome to Earth" Aaron muttered.

IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII

Stephen Wong did not believe in patience as a virtue. Born in San Francisco to Mandarin Chinese immigrants who had fled from the Communist Revolution, he had lived in the squalor of various American slums for the first sixteen years of his life, with his father working as a Pacific fisherman while his mother worked at a clothing factory. Despite their hope for the capitalist American Dream, the nation had scoffed at their people for their so-called "Communist roots", and Stephen was often alone during the day, waking up and going to school and then heading home alone to the slums of San Francisco, where the racism and roaming street gangs had taught him to expect results from his work, and to be tough.

During his sophomore year of high school, he and his family had moved to Chicago, Illinois, where the crime was even greater and the racism even stronger. Always having deplored the crime that had infested San Francisco and which now claimed Chicago, Stephen had pushed himself to his mental limits in school to become a policeman, and not just any kind of policeman:he wanted to be a detective so badly, to directly investigate the evidence and nab the lowlives themselves; above all else, he wanted to put his experience to good use, and make some kind of difference.

He had made it to Cornell University and had even achieved his dream of becoming a detective for the Chicago Police Department. The one thing in his way was his impatience.

Even though there were still many crimes in Chicago, less than half of them were solved. Killers and robbers were getting smarter, and there wasn't much evidence left at crime scenes to think of even a person of interest. Of course, Detective Stephen Wong would have none of this, and it was often because of his demand for something to happen that his cases went unsolved.

That wasn't what troubled him at the moment, though. His mind was completely fixed on this sudden attack by a vigilante, which itself was rare in Chicago, and it wasn't just any vigilante. This person-if it was even that-called itself "The Pocket" according to the only eyewitness, and had ripped a grown mans head clean off, and seemed to have run off with it. Its mask-if it was a mask-looked like a wolfs skull with pale eyes and long black hair, while its clothes were all black, save for a belt that the eyewitness said was a rope.

_Sounds a hell of a lot like SCP-1471…._, Stephen was thinking when someone knocked on his door.

"Come in" he said. The door opened and a tall, lanky middle-aged man wearing wire frame glasses and a black polyester coat walked in, his neck hunched and his head bent to the left side.

The man dropped a folded white piece of paper on Stephens desk, nodded, and walked out. Stephen picked up the folded paper and unfolded it; Terrance Lime was the artist for the Chicago Police Department and hardly ever talked to anyone, almost always absorbed in his artwork of crime suspects. He wasn't bad at his job, he was simply very strange and people felt rather uneasy around him.

Drawn on the paper was Limes impression of the vigilante:black hair long in the back but short in the front, a wolfs skull for a head, pale eyes staring right back at him, and a grin that displayed little more than fangs.

_Oh my God...that looks just like…_, he thought in shock as he took his phone out of his pocket.

_I need to let the Foundation know about this...__**right now.**_

IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII

"You almost done with your homework?" Brian Duke asked his son as he walked past the dining room table.

"Yeah" Charles Duke answered simply as he scrawled down an answer for the problem he was currently on.

"What subject is that?" his father asked him.

"Geometry" Charles dismissively said, more focused on his homework than the only parent he had left.

He wasn't tall, he wasn't muscular, and he wasn't fast. Charles Duke was perfectly average when it came to physical activities, and there was only one area he truly excelled in:academics. Encouraged by his mother to make something of himself before she passed away due to a sudden cerebral hemorrhage, he set out to fulfill her final wishes despite his fathers begging that he get involved in a sport because he could make more money that way. It wasn't easy trying to be successful at being smart, especially in Chicago:the other black students said he was "acting white", while the white kids said he was overstepping his boundaries. But he pushed himself forwards despite the mockery and his fathers pleading, and he would be damned if he was gonna let his mother's dreams fall apart for any reason.

There was a knock on the door. "I'll get it" his father said, and he hurried into the living room and to the front door. Charles didn't pay much attention.

His father unlocked the door and slowly opened it.

"Yes-"

Charles was vaguely aware of the yellow flash before the bang knocked him out of his seat and slammed into his ears. He covered them as they started ringing like an incredibly small gong that had been hit. He could still hear the door being slammed shut and the sound of tires screeching against the asphalt, though.

Forcing himself up, Charles hesitantly stumbled into the living room and turned to the right, where he saw two legs slumped on the ground.

_DAD!_, Charles thought as he sprinted over to the bottom of the staircase and came across a sight that forced his appetite away.

His father's body lay on the bottom stairs, and blood and red pieces of bone covered the wall, stairs, and bottom railing. Instead of the center of his forehead, there was a hole roughly five inches wide, and he could still see ruined brain and bone inside.

"DAD!" Charles screamed even though he knew his father had died before he even hit the ground. He grabbed his father's shirt and pulled himself forward, looking into the face of the only person left that he knew had loved him despite all of the begging.

"_**DAD!**_" he shrieked; outside, he could hear the neighbors throwing open their doors and rushing outside, asking what was going on.

Charles didn't care about them; he didn't care about his unfinished homework; all he cared about was his father, and who could have done this to him.

There was a good chance neither he nor the police would ever find out.

And for that, they would pay.

If he had to burn the city to do it, then so be it.

IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII

"_Rage is the death of light._"

-_Anonymous_

(_**NEXT ISSUE: **_The Pocket begins his vigilante life in full, while Aaron dreads returning to school. But all is not well below the surface as a mysterious "Foundation" sets its sights on The Pocket, and through Charles Duke, an ancient evil, once long-forgotten, resurfaces to exact a brutal vendetta. All this in _The Pocket #3:Life on the Street #2._)


End file.
